1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to field of information processing. In one aspect, the present invention relates to the transfer of information over signal paths.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication systems increasingly use multiple RF transmission paths to transmit and receive over multiple antennas to achieve diversity benefits such as increased signal throughput, reliability and/or quality. However, multi-antenna base stations may have transmit or receive signal paths between the radio base station and the radio equipment antennas which have different signal path delays, thereby requiring delay adjustments so that data sent over different paths arrives at a destination together. In such cases, the different signal path delays can present challenges in meeting timing alignment requirements between radio transmitter branches such as imposed by 3GPP technical specifications which limit the deviation between transmission paths. For example, it can be especially challenging to keep serial interfaces along a given signal path aligned with the radio frame clock for the base station in the event of any link failure at the serial interface without requiring the baseband modem to perform the data re-alignment for the entire path, thereby degrading the network quality and negatively affecting the performance of the base station.